China’s need for oil reserves for its growing domestic economy has caused its government to pursue investments in many countries of marginal stability and democracy, but its greatest oil success abroad has been in Sudan.

Although the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) had escaped the public relations hammering that Talisman was receiving, it was drawn into the controversy through the efforts of Sudan activists to bar the use of U.S. financial markets to raise money for anyone doing oil business in Sudan in late 1999.

China’s first foray into the world of high finance—to open up its enormous government-owned corporations to foreign investment—was a controversial offer to sell stock in CNPC to the public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Its offer, designed to raise a record U.S. $ 10 billion, had to be withdrawn and refashioned because of the negative publicity suggesting that the proceeds would be used to commit further human rights abuses in Sudan, Tibet, and elsewhere. Ultimately, the 90 percent-CNPC-owned subsidiary PetroChina, with a “firewall” to prevent any of the new capital from going to the Sudanese operations, proceeded with a stock offer to raise U.S. $ 10 billion. A broad-based coalition opposed to the PetroChina IPO ultimately succeeded in reducing the proceeds from the IPO by some 70% to only U.S. $ 2.89 billion. This reduced amount was raised with major participation from British Petroleum and a few other large companies. Questions about China’s financing of arms sales to Sudan and allegations of Chinese prison labor used in the construction of Sudan’s oil pipeline were never addressed.

China was not new to Sudan. By the time it invested in GNPOC in December 1996, it was already a familiar arms dealer to many Sudanese governments. The Nimeiri government (1969-85) bought weapons from China. But these purchases rose in the 1990s due to Sudan’s internal war and the promise of improved finances and enhanced international credit derived from its oil potential.

Weapons deliveries from China to Sudan since 1995 have included ammunition, tanks, helicopters, and fighter aircraft. China also became a major supplier of antipersonnel and antitank mines after 1980, according to a Sudanese government official.1387 The SPLA in 1997 overran government garrison towns in the south, and in one town alone, Yei, a Human Rights Watch researcher saw eight Chinese 122 mm towed howitzers, five Chinese-made T-59 tanks, and one Chinese 37 mm anti-aircraft gun abandoned by the government army.1388

Human Rights Watch concluded that while China’s motivation for this arms trade appeared to be primarily economic, China made available easy financing for some of these arms purchases.1389

China invested in Sudan’s nascent oil industry because of its need to acquire foreign oil reserves. While China expected its industrial development to make increasing demands for more oil, the Chinese oilfields had, by the late 1990s, already passed their peak production. “China until recently relied on its vast northeastern Daqing oilfield to fuel its energy needs, but output is declining and it has yet to find new large domestic supplies,” according to the Chinese government news agency Xinhua.1390

In the early 1990s, the Chinese government projected that it could have a shortfall of about 50 million tons of crude oil (30 percent of its oil needs) in 2000, while domestic crude output remained static at 160 million tons. China therefore had to rely on its ability to stake out oil reserves abroad. Oil analysts projected that China would become an oil importer—at the mercy of non-Chinese oil producing states and companies—within five years.1391 China set about becoming a global player in the oil industry. Chinese officials wanted “to have a 10-million-ton-oil supply from overseas a year by 2000 and 50 million tons of oil and 50 billion cubic meters of gas by 2010.”1392

By 1997, according to CNPC’s then president, Zhou Yongkang, China was “very aggressive in buying foreign oil and gas fields.”1393 The CNPC brought its first shipment of foreign crude oil to China in 1997.1394

CNPC, a government-owned corporation, acting through a wholly-owned subsidiary, took the largest share, 40 percent, in the GNPOC consortium on December 6, 1996, when Arakis sold 75 percent of its interest in the project to three other companies to form that consortium.1395 The Sudanese project was expected to produce up to ten million tons of oil a year for China by 2000, which would by itself help meet China’s projected oil import target for 2000.1396

In 1998, CNPC’s construction arm, China Petroleum Engineering & Construction (Group) Corporation (CPECC), participated in the construction of the 1,500-kilometer-long GNPOC pipeline from Blocks 1 and 2 to the Red Sea. It also built a refinery near Khartoum with a 2.5 million-ton processing capacity. It further engaged in “10 million tons oilfield surface engineering.” The Sudan project became “the first overseas large oilfield operated by China,” according to the Chinese.1397

The Chinese government-run news agency was effusive about China’s participation in the Sudan project, characterizing it as CNPC’s biggest overseas project to date.1398 The agency termed the oilfield, the long oil pipeline, and the oil refinery China built in Sudan “a major breakthrough in China’s overseas oil work.”1399 The news agency likewise claimed, “China has made a series of technological breakthroughs in undertaking the huge [Sudan] oil project, including in the sectors of oil engineering technology, geological prospecting and oil drilling.”1400

Yet, China claimed it did not make any profit on the pipeline, refinery, and two oil well projects in Sudan. The vice president of CPECC said, “A Western company couldn’t have done what we did . . . Sudan wanted it done in 18 months and we did it, even though we knew we wouldn’t make any money.”1401

China admitted that it brought in a team of 10,000 Chinese laborers so the GNPOC project could be completed by the NIF’s tenth anniversary (June 30, 1999). Its labor costs were low: “Our workers are used to eating bitterness . . . they can work 13 to 14 hours a day for very little.”1402 Similarly, the Chinese subcontractor (also a Chinese government enterprise) brought in two Chinese crews for the seismic phase of the Lundin operation in Block 5A. They were new, straight from Beijing. Some did not know how to drive a vehicle.1403

It was widely rumored in the oil business in Sudan that the Chinese planned to bring in prisoners to build the pipelines, which was allegedly how they underbid others to get the pipeline contract.1404 Still, it is difficult to see how Chinese laborers brought to Sudan could live and work for less than southern Sudanese laborers, even Chinese prisoners, because of the transportation cost—even if the transport was one-way for many who may have perished from disease in the inhospitable swamps and baked savannahs. China also admitted that the Sudanese army had to protect the Chinese workers from rebel attacks.1405

The Chinese companies’ failure to hire local staff led to copious complaints from southerners. In Block 5A, Lundin and its Chinese subcontractor had a crew of sixty people in the “highland” location (Ryer/Thar Jath), forty-five of whom were (northern) Sudanese, the rest Chinese. On the “swamp crew” of sixty (on the White Nile), thirty to forty were Sudanese, the rest Chinese. The Chinese spoke no English and translations were done by the Chinese party chief, who spoke rudimentary English.

The Chinese subcontractor had recruited in the north and hired northern Sudanese to work on this Block 5A project, though they did not have any technical expertise and had to be trained on the job. The Rappaport security consultant to Lundin advised Lundin and the Chinese that it was not a good idea to take northerners to the south to work. Everyone from the Bentiu area, from the governor to the local hires, complained that there were not enough locals on the job, he reported. The Chinese subcontractor insisted on bringing in these northern workers, however. After some incidents, the security company put its foot down on hiring northern Sudanese, and the Chinese subcontractor relented.1406

The Chinese companies involved in GNPOC did all this work, their spokesman said, for no profit—for valuable experience overseas—which, as China omitted to mention, was gained mostly under Talisman as project manager. The Wall Street Journal nevertheless reported in 1999 that the Sudan project accounted for U.S. $ 500 million of a record $ 710 million in revenues (unaudited) for China Petroleum Engineering & Construction (Group) Corporation.1407

CNPC announced in April 1999 that it planned to begin selling shares to the public in China and overseas to help fund new projects.1408 This was to be the first initial public offering (IPO) that the Chinese government was to make, to be followed by many more as it restructured and privatized its state-controlled economy. China planned to open with a big splash in the U.S.: the CNPC IPO was to be the biggest IPO Wall Street had ever seen, at some U.S. $ 10 billion. CNPC would become the first Chinese state company to be listed and traded on the NYSE.

The listing and the IPO immediately ran into trouble on account of China’s record of human rights abuses and the CNPC investment in Sudan. U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) on September 30, 1999 wrote the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC, which regulates securities filings required for an IPO) asking it to disapprove the CNPC’s listing on the NYSE. U.S. Representative Wolf said that permitting CNPC to raise U.S. money on the NYSE would bypass the U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Sudan, a state sponsor of terrorism and a CNPC partner in the oil project. It would also make it easier for Americans to unknowingly invest in a company “that is propping up a regime engaged in slavery, genocide, and terrorism.”1409 Representative Wolf claimed that Sudan was CNPC’s largest venture and that it invested an estimated U.S. $ 1 to $ 2 billion in Sudan, on a total CNPC investment of U.S. $15 billion.1410

Roger W. Robinson, Jr., chair of the William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy and former official in Pres. Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council, brought up additional reasons for objecting to the IPO: CNPC was in partnership elsewhere in the world with two other states on the State Department’s list of countries sponsoring terrorism, Iraq and Iran.1411

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (U.S. CIRF),1412 a creation of the U.S. Congress, on November 1, 1999, asked the U.S. Treasury to extend the stringent 1997 economic sanctions imposed on U.S. companies doing business with Sudan to CNPC and others using American debt and equity markets to raise money for the Sudan oil project. The grounds were that CNPC’s oil interest in Sudan would fund a “war against the south . . . patterns of forced conversion to Islam, manipulation of food aid, bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, churches, and other civilian targets, as well as enslavement.”1413 This pressure came just as the Clinton administration was launching an effort to persuade Congress to approve China’s admission into the World Trade Organization.1414

Two days after the U.S. CIRF demand, CNPC’s investment bankers Goldman Sachs restructured the deal. They created a separate company to float the public offering, PetroChina Co., which would operate only inside China.

CNPC’s domestic China holdings would be spun off to PetroChina and the CNPC would exclude its Sudan (and all other foreign) operations from the IPO.1415 Oil analysts had already expressed disaffection with CNPC’s overseas crude reserves, some of which had a low yield (such as in Peru) or political problems (such as in Iraq).1416

The proceeds of the IPO were to be used solely for development of China’s domestic oil reserves1417 and PetroChina would not use any of its funds for Sudanese operations, according to CNPC’s investment bankers.1418 The CNPC claimed it needed the IPO funds to build new infrastructure in China to transport crude as well as oil products within China. The Chinese government had already restricted oil imports so its domestic oil company, now PetroChina, could reap a profit.1419

PetroChina would rank as China’s largest company, with 70 percent of the country’s petroleum reserves and accounting for two-thirds of its oil and gas production. It would immediately become the world’s fourth-largest publicly traded oil and gas company, although the Chinese government, through CNPC, would still own 80 to 90 percent of PetroChina’s stock after the public offering.1420

PetroChina maintained it was neither a U.S. nor a Sudanese company nor would it have direct business dealings with Sudan.1421 Upon closer examination, this was not the divorce it first appeared to be for at least two reasons: income and debt. Critics charged that the CNPC, as the parent company, would receive 90 percent of PetroChina’s income, including funds raised in the IPO. PetroChina’s chairman denied the company would use proceeds from its stock offering to fund projects in Sudan.1422

When created, PetroChina inherited U.S. $ 15 billion in debt from CNPC, giving critics the opportunity to point to more overlap: this debt, incurred partly in connection with the GNPOC project, would be borne by PetroChina.1423 Pressure in the U.S. against CNPC mounted: in December 1999 170 civic and religious leaders urged President Clinton to amend U.S. sanctions on Sudan to ban CNPC access to U.S. capital markets as long as it was a partner in Sudan’s oil development, arguing that “the fungibility of money and the scale of CNPC’s activities in Sudan thoroughly undermine the credibility of this [PetroChina] contrivance.”1424

In February 2000, President Clinton extended the 1997 U.S. sanctions on Sudan to GNPOC and Sudapet by executive order.1425 In a setback for the campaigners, however, the U.S. Treasury Department answered Rep. Frank Wolf’s letter in April 2000, ruling that the 1997 presidential executive order imposing economic sanctions on doing business with Sudan did not prohibit U.S. citizens from investing in non-Sudanese companies doing business in or with the Sudanese government.1426—describing CNPC and Talisman to a “T.” Some experts claimed it would be unprecedented to apply such sanctions to stock and bond transactions, since sanctions are usually limited to trade and investment. President Clinton said he shared U.S. CIRF’s concerns about new oil revenue for Khartoum. But extraterritorial or third country sanctions, he maintained, would “ultimately prove counter productive and hurt U.S. ability to use diplomatic means to maintain pressure on [Khartoum].”1427

But these protest actions, and those of the other campaigners on Sudan, delayed the Chinese financial offer by at least four months and substantially cut back the funds raised.1428

After CNPC spun off the PetroChina subsidiary to avoid Sudan protests, the PetroChina IPO was still not quite on track: it was further delayed by extensive questions by the NYSE.1429 U.S. Congressmen on March 1, 2000, signed a letter opposing the PetroChina IPO on human rights and other grounds.1430

Then the largest American trade union federation, the AFL-CIO,1431 entered the fray, urging investors to stay away from the PetroChina offer. The union claimed the money raised would be used to lay off one million oil workers in China.1432 In response to Goldman Sach’s road show promoting the PetroChina public offering, the AFL-CIO launched its own “alternative road show.” AFL-CIO Chairman John Sweeney, in a teleconference call with forty-two leading global institutional investors in March, warned about the hazards of buying PetroChina’s stock.1433

On March 22, 2000 the AFL-CIO and the NGO Free Tibet co-sponsored a protest at the office of PetroChina’s investment banker Goldman Sachs in New York City.1434 Bill Patterson, director of AFL-CIO’s office of investments, was convinced that political opposition and subsequent negative press reduced interest in PetroChina’s IPO: “We haven’t found a single fund yet that even wants to get near this deal.”1435

BP Amoco PLC offered to purchase up to one billion dollars, or twenty percent, of PetroChina’s IPO. In return, BP Amoco, a long-time investor in China, received the right to establish a gas-marketing joint venture in eastern China.

In response, the broad anti-PetroChina coalition began a boycott of BP Amoco gas stations in the U.S. in March 2000.1436 Although BP Amoco had not directly invested in Sudan or GNPOC, any affiliation with PetroChina or CNPC, direct or indirect, continued to invite harsh criticism. The head of one advocacy group warned PetroChina investors with this sound bite: “If you want to be tarred with this radioactive slave stock then we will do that.”1437 Ultimately the PetroChina IPO raised U.S. only $2.9 billion.1438 The anti-PetroChina coalition represented possibly the most effective example of shareholder activism since the South Africa divestment campaign. CNPC continued to hold 90 percent of PetroChina stock.

CNPC did not respond to Human Rights Watch correspondence mailed or faxed to its Sudan office and in care of the Chinese embassy in the U.S.

In 2001, confirming earlier trends, Chinese oil industry officials announced that CNPC had targeted Sudan as the centerpiece of its ambitions to triple overseas production by 2005. CNPC planned to establish two new oilfields in Sudan with a combined output of 180,000 barrels per day, on top of its “biggest overseas windfall,” in the GNPOC concession. The two new oilfields would be in Blocks 3 and 7 (Melut Basin), and Block 6 (Muglad Basin in western Sudan, northwest of the GNPOC concession).

CNPC had received revenue of more than U.S. $ 600 million from the GNPOC concession since exports began in September 1999, and Sudan accounted for two-thirds of CNPC’s overseas production in 2000.1439 CNPC’s dependence on Sudanese crude oil continued to expand, importing 2.69 million tons from Sudan in January to June 2001, up 38 percent from the year before.1440

But China’s involvement in Sudan continued to draw criticism and reports of military cooperation. One journalist said that CNPC “reportedly purchased a high-tech radar system for the government last year [2000].”1441 This allegation remains to be investigated.1442

The Khartoum refinery, inaugurated with great fanfare on the tenth anniversary of the Islamist-military coup of June 30, 1989, was built to suppl the bulk of petroleum products consumed in Sudan. Described in the press as a private enterprise, it has been described by the IMF as a joint venture between Sudan and the CNPC, with mostly Chinese financing.

The CNPC secured a valuable concession in the contract: if debt service on this refinery is not met, the CNPC has the right to lift the equivalent of crude oil in kind—which would leave Sudan without its domestic fuel to refine. As the IMF put it, as to the debt to CNPC for the refinery, “nonpayment thus is not a realistic option.”1443 Debt service payments for the Khartoum refinery, amounting to U.S. $ 60 million, would have priority over all other debt service payments, such as to the IMF, the World Bank, and other creditors.1444

1394 Xu Yihe, “China CNPC’s Pursuit for Foreign Oil . . .,” June 3, 1999. According to the article, the aggressive foreign buying had slacked off in 1998 but resumed when Chinese crude supplies showed a marginal decline (average 1.8 percent domestic crude production for the 1990s) and domestic demand increased (average 5.4 percent a year for the 1990s).

1406 Paul Wilson, interview, May 16, 2001. In 1998, one of the northern Sudanese workers reportedly sexually abused a Nuer boy. The boy’s family allegedly set up an ambush to kill the man in revenge. He had to be smuggled out of the area to save his life. Ibid.

1408 “CNPC Plans to Raise Investment Cash with Share Sale,” Bloomberg (New York), Hong Kong, April 1, 1999. The proposal was made in 1999 when crude prices rose 2.9 percent to U.S. $ 15.24, the highest since September 1998. For a comprehensive analysis of China’s oil demands and international expansion by CNPC, see Rice University, James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, “China and Long-range Asia Energy Security: An Analysis ofthe Political, Economic and Technological Factors Shaping Asian Energy Markets,” Baker Institute Study Number 11, April 1999, http://riceinfo.rice.edu/projects/baker/publications/claes/executive_summary.html. Also see http://www.csis.org/africa/index.htm (accessed October 30, 2002).

1424 John Lebate and Stephen Fidler, “China Oil Group Prepares for $7 billion IPO,” Financial Times (London), New York and Washington, D.C., December 20, 1999.

1425 U.S. President William J. Clinton, Executive Order 13067, “Blocking Sudanese Government Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Sudan,” Washington, D.C., November 4, 1997, http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri‑res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/1997/11/5/2.text.2 (accessed February 24, 2000).

1431 American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations is a voluntary federation of America’s unions, representing more than 13 million working men and women nationwide. See http://www.aflcio.org/front/faqs.htm (accessed May 22, 2002).

1441 Mindy Belz, “Blood for oil,” World on the Web, vol. 16, no. 9, March 20, 2001, distributed by the office of U.S. Rep. Frank R. Wolf, March 7, 2001, sourced to http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/03-10-01/international_1.asp.

1444 The World Bank has resumed its engagement in Sudan and is preparing a Country Economic Memorandum for Sudan. Its has assisted in research in Sudan in preparation for its full engagement at a later date, presumably when the arrears are paid off. The nonlending program provided assistance in the areas of irrigation and Nile Basin management services. The Bank approved a Post-Conflict Fund grant to support several analyses, including a survey on selected human resource indicators (a survey that could not be undertaken throughout Sudan, of course). This program was initiated after the government began repaying part of its arrears off in 1999 at a rate of U.S. $ 2 million a month, which it was forced to suspend because of lower than expected oil prices. Ibid., pp. 41, 57.